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March 21, 2011

I am sitting in a first class car on the high-speed train from Shanghai to Nanjing. It seems to travel at about 200 MPH. Very smooth, considering how quickly scenery is whizzing by the windows. One could get very dizzy if they continue to stare out the window. Not me, some other old guy from LA attempting to document their trip on a laptop while traveling through China. Next trip, I bring a pair of blinders. We are racing through community after community where the skylines are dotted with giant cranes. Not the birds, the giant orange metal cranes lifting large beams of steel into the polluted air. All part of the ravenous appetite to add more high rises. It’s pretty unfathomable to see how many new buildings are under construction, pretty much everywhere. You can see old residences from another era, being torn down to make way for new construction. At some point, with the way things are being done, there won’t be anything recognizable from what life ‘used’ to look like, unless you venture into the forbidden city or a designated ‘old’ city area. Not much in the way of single-family dwellings, although there seems to be enough land. The theory is, there are too many people to have individual homes.

The train ride is an hour and fifteen minutes from Shanghai to Nanjing. It would have been a four to five hour car ride. I am excited to visit here. There is much animosity between the Chinese and Japanese. Nanjing is where over 300,000 Chinese were massacred by the Japanese and Japan will not apologize, let alone acknowledge these atrocities. I was sent an article yesterday on Nanjing. It seems to be a vibrant, 6 million plus city with museums and coffee houses and a thriving art scene. Apparently there are a lot of young people there. I’m looking forward to the visit, even if it’s only for the day.

I will visit a primary school after lunch and a local TV crew is supposed to come film. Shall be interesting. Afterwards, we will go to a university to address students studying to be teachers. Apparently they have made the talk open to art students as well.

Yesterday we met with some editors from a Chinese publisher. It was very interesting. They were all very young women. All with degrees varying from Literature to Early Childhood education. We sat around a round conference table. They passed around a few of my books. Initially I asked most of the questions and as the meeting progressed, they started asking me questions. They were most impressed that some editors in the United States try to keep illustrators and writers apart. The Chinese editors find themselves trying to please both the authors and illustrators, all of the time. When I showed them what a book dummy looks like, they said the wished their writers would submit work that far developed. They often get stories, without any indication for page breaks. I think the dummy concept was something they only had dreamed about.

We arrived in Nanjing and there are so many trees, the city seems quite nice. I visited the primary school where the headmaster is apparently a very highly respected Chinese educator. The school had over 1,000 students. As with every institution I visited in China, I was escorted into a room to meet the powers that be and share a cup of tea. This is a nice custom. I couldn’t help but think about some of the schools I visit in the states where I come into the school office and am sent to the cafeteria or auditorium with a librarian or teacher so I can set up. Sometimes I never meet a school principal. The only downside to the cup of tea intro is, I have zero time to set up. Every place I visited in China, I would walk into a full room with kids politely (and sometimes enthusiastically) applauding as I entered. Boom. So much for setting up! Another note on the schools in China. Every one I visited had a guard in front with a serious gate protecting the school. Unless you have clearance, you cannot come in. There are more